Urbana Township, Champaign County

How Urbana Township, Champaign County began

Urbana Township surrounds the city of Urbana in the middle of Champaign County and takes its name from the county seat. Thomas Pearce had a log cabin on the future town site by 1803, and settlers came into the Mad River valley on the claims that Simon Kenton and William Ward opened starting in 1799; Ward had Urbana laid out on his land in 1805. The township itself was organized later, most likely in 1811: its first recorded election, on October 8 of that year, drew 87 voters, and its present boundaries appear in the commissioners' records by 1814. Outside the city it is farmland, from the rolling north to the level 'Pretty Prairie' in the south, with the county infirmary, the old Urbana camp-meeting grounds and the remains of the mill hamlet of Powhatan on Buck Creek.

Settled 1799, incorporated 1811 (first recorded election October 8, 1811; limits defined by 1814).

Where the name comes from

Named for the city of Urbana, the county seat that sits at its center.

Before the town

No village, mound, or treaty site specific to Urbana Township outside the city itself was found in the sources checked. The township lies in the Mad River valley that was Shawnee territory before the Treaty of Greenville (1795); Simon Kenton, who helped found neighboring Urbana, had been a Shawnee captive in this valley in 1778-79. No documented site-specific village or earthwork was found within the township's bounds; see the Urbana (city) file for the same caveat. The 1917 county history adds only that the name of Powhatan, a hamlet in the township's southeastern corner, recalls Native people, and it gives no account of any site in the township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1799 — Simon Kenton brought settler families into the Mad River valley between the future Urbana and Springfield; William Ward settled among them.
2. 1803 — Thomas Pearce was living in a log cabin on East Market Street, the first settler on the site of the future city of Urbana.
3. 1805 — William Ward had Urbana laid out on his land in section 23; until then the new county's court had met at a temporary seat of justice in George Fithian's house in Springfield.
4. 1811 — Urbana Township held its first recorded election on October 8, with 87 voters, including Simon Kenton; Zephaniah Luce, William Glenn and William Stevens were elected trustees.
5. 1814 — A county commissioners' record of 1814 defines the township's limits as they remain today: all of township 5, range 11, and the northern tier of sections in range 10, a total of 26,880 acres.
6. 1815 — William Ward built his farmhouse, Nutwood Place, on the township's northern edge; he lived there until his death in 1822.
7. 1816 — The town of Urbana began its separate political life, and from then on the township's history was largely the city's.
8. 1820 — William Patrick became township clerk and was re-elected every year until 1852, thirty-two years in all.
9. 1861 — Absalom Jennings, who bought Nutwood Place from the Ward family, had a brick round barn built on the farm.
10. 1880 — The township, including the city, counted 7,781 people, up from 2,456 in 1840.
11. 1904 — The buildings of the Urbana camp-meeting ground, about two miles south of the city in section 15, burned on November 17.
12. 1917 — The 1917 county history described Powhatan, a mill hamlet on Buck Creek in section 1, as down to three or four houses and a blacksmith shop.

Stories

The founder's farm outside his own town

William Ward kept a working farm just north of the town he platted, naming it Nutwood Place. He built the farmhouse in 1815 and lived there until he died on the property on Christmas Eve, 1822. The farm passed out of the Ward family in 1856 to Absalom Jennings, a New York City hatter who moved to Ohio and had a distinctive brick round barn built on the land in 1861. The house and barn together were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, one of eight listings in the Urbana area, and stand as one of the township's few tangible links to the county's founding generation.

Powhatan, the mill village that faded

In the southeastern corner of the township, where Buck Creek crosses into Union Township in section 1, the creek's water power supported a small village called Powhatan. No one recorded when it began, but in the 1850s it had a woolen factory run by W. Wharton, a shoe shop kept by J. Guinn, a store, a blacksmith and a doctor, Evan Banes. The woolen mill was later turned into a flour mill and then closed. By 1917 only three or four houses were left, and the one business still running was a blacksmith shop, which the county history said had never been missing from the spot since the first smith lit his forge there. A second would-be village, Bowlusville, in the same corner of the township, was platted with 157 lots but never got past the paper stage.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org

Groundwater from wells (described locally as two well fields) feeding two treatment plants -- one near Old Troy Pike (GAC filtration) and one near State Route 29 (pressure filtration for iron/manganese) -- both drawing from the same high-yield buried-valley aquifer… The water here

• Urbana City97% of residentslocal wells (sand and gravel outwash aquifer)
• Harvest Square Mobile Home Park2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Rolling Hills Mobile Home Park1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Sunset Terrace Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Private schools (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-18
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-12

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